Category: Past Seminars

Next CURE seminar: Dr. Michael Hayes, Friday, Dec. 7

This talk will present new findings on the unintended consequences of the New Jersey Superintendent Salary Cap (NJSSC). Starting in 2011, New Jersey set a salary cap for all future superintendent contracts based on student enrollment. This is one of the first state-imposed tax and expenditure limitations (TELs) placed directly on local public managers. The salary cap caused large reductions in base salaries for future superintendent contracts in the majority of NJ school districts. Using a difference-in-difference estimation strategy, the current study estimates the effect of NJSSC on superintendent turnover following the 2010-11 school year. Specifically, this study finds that an additional $10,000 reduction in base salary due to the NJSSC corresponds to a 4.0 percentage point increase in the likelihood of superintendent turnover for school districts with an expiring contract relative to those school districts without an expiring contract. Additionally, this study finds this increase in the likelihood of superintendent turnover following the enactment of NJSSC was largest for the least affluent school districts in New Jersey.

Michael Hayes

Dr. Michael S. Hayes received his PhD in Public Administration & Policy from the School of Public Affairs at American University. His research interests include public budgeting & finance, K-12 education finance, summer learning loss, value-added models, and state and local tax policy. He has been honored with the Emerging Scholars Award by the National Association of Schools of Public Affairs & Administration. His research has been published in various academic journals including the American Journal of Education, Economic Letters, Educational Policy, Journal of Economic Geography, and Public Budgeting & Finance. He also has been interviewed and cited in numerous media outlets including The Brookings Institute, Chalkbeat, Education Week, Politico, U.S. News and World Report, The Wall Street Journal. Professor Hayes teaches Quantitative Methods, Foundations of Policy Analysis, and Financial Management of Public Programs.

 

Join us for this free event! Lunch will be served!

CURE Seminar Series: “Employee Ownership and Urban Economic Development” with Christopher Michael, J.D.

Thursday, March 22
Armitage Hall, Faculty Lounge
12:30 p.m. – 1:45 p.m.

Presented by Christopher Michael, J.D.
Director of Employee Ownership, Newark Community Economic Development Corporation

To date, cities have not fully utilized employee ownership as an economic development strategy––as a means to retain businesses, improve the quality of jobs, and expand the local tax base. In this short lecture, Chris Michael will share personal experiences with initiatives in New York City and Newark, NJ that aim to increase the number and size of employee-owned businesses in the local region. As context, he will also relate findings from dissertation research on the history of employee ownership in the United States.
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CURE Seminar Series: “Running the Rails: A History of Capital and Labor in the Philadelphia Transit Industry” with James Wolfinger

Friday, February 16
Armitage Hall, Faculty Lounge
11:15 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.

Presented by James Wolfinger
Associate Dean & Professor Secondary History at DePaul College of Education

Philadelphia exploded in violence in 1910. The general strike that year claimed the lives of some two dozen people and made Philadelphia a prominent point in the tumultuous national conflict over workers’ rights. That strike was a notable point, but not a unique one, in the history of Philadelphia’s transit system. My paper, “Running the Rails: A History of Capital and Labor in the Philadelphia Transit Industry,” outlines the chief arguments that I make in my recent book, Running the Rails (Cornell University Press, 2016), which details a generations-long history of conflict between the workers and management at one of the nation’s largest privately owned transit systems. In particular, I focus on how labor relations shifted from the 1880s to the 1960s as transit workers adapted to fast-paced technological innovation to keep the city’s people and commerce on the move while management sought to limit its employees’ rights. I argue that it is remarkable to see how much Philadelphia’s transit workers achieved. (more…)

CURE Seminar Series: “The Price of Race in New Brooklyn’s Real Estate” with Zaire Z. Dinzey-Flores

Thursday, January 25
Armitage Hall, Faculty Lounge
12:30 p.m. – 1:45 p.m.

Presented by Zaire Z. Dinzey-Flores
Associate Professor of Sociology and Latino and Caribbean Studies at Rutgers University

“Location, location, location…” so goes the trope for how real estate properties derive their value. But how does race figure in the attribution of value for a property and a neighborhood? Based on ethnographic and mixed-method research in two demographically-transitioning neighborhoods in 21st Century Brooklyn, Dinzey-Flores considers how neighborhood spaces and property interiors are aesthetically, discursively, and materially produced and crafted by real estate actors in ways that render previously socially de-valued neighborhoods “valuable” and “worthy” of investment. Of particular focus, is the way in which racial conceptualizations—of “blackness,” “Latino-ness”, or “whiteness”—are codified and “built in” in the social desirability and economic valuation process of properties and neighborhoods. (more…)